“A country in which freedom of speech effectively did not exist, even though it remained a technical right, would not be America. A government that allowed such a thing would have no right to exist.”

Sooner or later someone is going to remember that the Internet itself, and the social media, too, would not have come into existence without major developmental efforts funded by the American taxpayer–by you and me. Google and Facebook have taken their share of public money while claiming all the rights and privileges of private ownership. But in fact they are already, and have been all along, quasi-public agencies: and, as such, obligated to respect the First Amendment.

They mustn’t be allowed to restrict speech only to liberals, Democrats, and Far Left Crazy (you will overlook the tautology).

This past week I’ve been averaging approximately no Facebook referrals per day, and it beats me why. I haven’t been censored–well, what I mean is, no one has told me I’ve been censored.

I wonder: could it be that a whole lot of people have left Facebook, and there’s no one around to do whatever it is that somebody does to create a referral? Could their traffic be that far down? If it is, they’ve got problems.

Yessir, they’re gonna set up a “regulator” who will have the power to shut down any sites on the internet where they find any of the following: 1) inciting violence and spreading violent content; 2) encouraging self-harm or suicide (Are you listening, Netflix?); 3) spread of “disinformation and fake news,” whatever that may be; 4)cyber-bullying; 5) children accessing “inappropriate material” (eye-of-the-beholder alert); and 6) child exploitation and abuse content.

To some, “violence” is defined as any failure to agree with their Far Left delusions. To governments, and especially to Democrats, “fake news” is anything they don’t want you to know about, or anything that makes them look bad: but if it’s aimed at Donald Trump, no problem. As for “inappropriate material,” grade school libraries are full of fornication-celebrating “young readers” books.

Do you trust politicians to decide what you can or can’t say on the Internet?

Ya see, more regulation means more freedom. Somehow. And Zuckerberg only wants government to come down on “harmful content”–wonder who gets to decide what content is harmful–“election integrity” (so The Russians can’t steal another one from another anointed Democrat candidate), privacy (they just can’t help themselves, when it comes to collecting and selling users’ private information!), and “data portability,” whatever that is. One can almost hear Sessue Hayakawa telling Alec Guinness, “Be happy in your work.”

Meaning, the government in the United Kingdom has promised to stifle Twitter and Instagram if they don’t consent to stricter regulation.

No one has asked this question: Is government any more fit to regulate the social media than the social media themselves? Is it any more honest, any more wise, any more benevolent? Do the personnel of government even obey the government’s own laws–or just ignore or circumvent them every time?

Freedom is not natural to sinners living in a fallen world. God has given us laws which, if followed, would bless us with both liberty and security. The world hates God’s laws and refuses to abide by them. The state of the world is testimony to how good an idea that is.

There is an important role for civil government in God’s scheme of things–to keep the peace, to protect us from those who would do us harm, and to punish evildoers (see Romans Chapter 13). In our Constitution, powers not specifically granted to the central government are reserved to the states and to the people.

You won’t find today’s theories of government in either the Bible or the Constitution.

It got “to” be a missteak thay are ownly Sposed “to” bann Hatters and Biggits and Wite Spramassists and christins and Repubbicans not us Socile Juststus Wirers!!!!!!!!!! Waht fore did i “get” bannded!?!?

Our friend Caralyn, at beautybeyondbones.com , is the latest to be censored by Facebook–simply for taking a pro-life stance against New York’s new law permitting late-term abortion right up until the moment of birth.

Caralyn posted what she describes as “a passionately pro-life” message on her blog, “Nightmare in New York” (https://beautybeyondbones.com/2019/01/28/andrew-cuomo-nightmare-in-new-york/), on Jan. 28. It was passionate, all right; but it contained no incitement to violence, no profanity, no personal abuse of anyone involved. She merely voiced an opinion shared by tens of millions of Americans. In short, there was nothing there that invited censorship; but Facebook banned her anyway. Four times she tried to advertise her post; four times Facebook shut her down.

“Evil is on the prowl in New York,” she wrote. She was appalled by the enthusiasm with which Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed abortion expansion into law. Cuomo, as she pointed out, is “a professing Catholic”; and she strongly criticized New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan who “has done nothing publicly” to, er, remind Cuomo that what he has advocated is a sin–murder–and dramatically opposed to all Catholic teachings.

What? She’s not allowed to say that? You can think it, but you can’t say it? What kind of public discussion of a controversial issue bans a whole side of the argument?

Doctrinaire “conservatives,” who never seem all that interested in conserving anything, will disagree with me: but I’m now convinced that the social media giants, including Facebook, need to be subjected to some kind of antitrust action. They are functioning as a monopoly, trying to ensure that only Far Left opinions can be published. Given the importance of the social media in what ought to be a public dialogue, it must not be allowed to be a monopoly. Trump administration, we need you to put a stop to this.

If all the news outlets in America were owned by the same few people, and presented only one side of any issue, and stifled all dissent, we would think our country was being very poorly served. That is not what our founders intended when they wrote freedom of the press into the First Amendment.

I can only believe that the left-wing social media resort to censorship because they’re afraid our side will win the argument.

Most of us around here believe the social media actively censor conservative posts and videos in favor of Far Left Crazy videos. Some of us have experienced it for ourselves. Nevertheless, last month the Google CEO told Congress that the folks at Google never “manually intervene” on any particular search result.

After a Far Left “journalist” complained about too many pro-life videos on YouTube, Google went to work and pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for abortion and replaced them with pro-abortion videos.

If this is true–and I find it hard to believe that it isn’t–then really the time has come for some kind of anti-trust action to be taken against the social media giants. It certainly looks like they’re using their technology to try to suppress conservative opinion and promote the agenda of Democrats and their Far Left Crazy clients.

If there were meaningful competition in the social media market, then Google’s Far Left prejudices would be their own business. But such competition does not as yet exist, and you can be sure there are people working to make sure it never will. We don’t have time to wait for competitive social media platforms to grow and become just as strong as Google–not with a national election coming up next year.

Because if Google’s Democrat friends ever get back into power, they’ll see to it that there’s no way to get rid of them.

Lieu added that “over the long run, it’s better the government does not regulate the content of speech.”

Oh, please. The government doesn’t have to do it, if Google and Facebook do it for them! Let the social media monopolies do the dirty work. They’ve been doing a a fine job of it, so far.

And before we heave a sigh of relief over the First Amendment, just imagine how this would play out with a Supreme Court packed by, say, Hillary Clinton–or any other Democrat. What do you want to bet that those judges, citing “the living Constitution” that has replaced that crummy old original, would quickly discover all sorts of “nuances” that would restrict free speech to the Far Left Crazy, to the exclusion of the rest of us? Free speech for liberals, censorship for everybody else.

Sort of like the way they do it on college campuses, these days.

If we entrust the Democrat Party with any role in governance, we’ll suffer for it. But good.

People are not going to “just walk away” from Twitter, because they are addicted to social media and can’t do without it. So, until such time as competing social media platforms are established, that don’t censor you for speaking truth…

Well, we need some anti-trust activity from our executive branch.

Far Left platforms like Twitter and Facebook have a stranglehold on the social media, which have become one of our dominant means of communication. Imagine if the phone company cut off your service because they didn’t like your politics. Would that be allowed? Well, it would if Democrats were running things.

These culprits function as a monopoly in the field of communications, and they need to be taken down a peg.

Meanwhile, it displays the self-evident vacuousness of the “transgender” argument that it can only survive with the aid of viewpoint censorship.